Talking Bird

Papa

Last night, I had a nearly surreal moment. I stayed up until 3am with my roommate Jon and my dad, watching olympic volleyball and discussing everything under the sun. Time travel, religion, politics, mythology, war, peace, works of fiction. Everything. One topic of discussion I hadn’t thought much about.

The world is so heavily divided. As far back as we can remember, there has been a rift between the Judeo-Christian world and the Muslim world. We realized that this began with Abraham, as both religions trace their roots to him. The repercussions of Abraham’s choice to not trust God and attempt to have his offspring come from Hagar instead of Sarah are so far reaching, we don’t even realize it all started because of this. It’s incredible. A butterfly effect of sorts, that if Abraham had simply trusted God, who knows what the modern world would look like.

The fact that Muslims and Jews still have this disdain for each other is a testament to long memories. Memories that we as Americans don’t seem to have. The last time I was in South Carolina, I don’t remember feeling animosity toward these people who seceded from my country and shot and killed northerners. Come to think of it, I didn’t feel any hatred the last time I met a German or a Japanese person, either. Soldiers who literally shot at each other during World War II don’t even have this great divide that the Ishmaelites and Israelites have. Is this simply a cultural divide? One that is so deeply engrained within these two religions? One that would not and could not exist between nation-states like the Nazis and Americans? Or is this more a result of the world not being as good as it could have been had we trusted God? A result of rejecting God’s plan and trying to do things our own way.

God uses our rejection of him to teach us lessons, and in spite of our shortcomings, rectifies the situation, while at the same time making sure we realize that things would have been far better had we simply trusted him. Adam, Moses, and Abraham give us very striking examples of this, but even in our contemporary world, because of the actions of a few, the world has changed completely.

It’s our responsibility to fully invest ourselves to the will of God, to the point it becomes indiscernable to our own. Only then will the world begin to be changed, rebuilt, and fully redeemed, and the divisions that exist between men and men and between men and God be destroyed.